First openly gay swimmer to compete for Estonia

Ayrton Kasemets, a 21-year-old Estonian-American openly gay swimmer from Chicago is to compete at the World University Games in August in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan.

The World University Games, also called Universiade, is a multinational sporting event held every other year. This year’s games are expected to draw athletes from 150 countries.

For Ayrton Kasemets, a Chicago native and both an American and an Estonian citizen, this is his first Universiade. And in addition to representing Estonia at the games, according to outsports.com, he is also happy to represent the LGBT community.

“I have always wanted to compete on an international level and these games are a great way to represent my country and university,” Kasemets told another website, chicago.gopride.com. “I am very proud, honored to be selected. It has been a dream of mine for many years to compete at an international meet at the level such as this one.”

Kasemets graduated from Mundelein High School in Illinois and has just completed his junior year at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He came out as gay in 2014 in an article on outsports.com.

Sten Hankewitz is a lifelong journalist and Deputy Editor of Estonian World. Having lived in Estonia, Spain and the UK, he now resides in the United States. He loves to write and besides contributing to Estonian World and some occasional blogging, he writes for other media outlets in Estonia, Israel and elsewhere. He has strong convictions and he shows them unashamedly. You can follow him on Twitter, friend him on Facebook or check out his personal blog. You can write to Sten at sten@estonianworld.com.

Hetero

Yeaaahhh…. i don’t have anything agains ‘ass-fuckers’ as long as they stay in a fucking closet. This is bullshit. Hang yourself you faggot.